


having nothing in an infinite night

by silpium



Series: inktober 2019 [4]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Groundhog Day, M/M, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-12-07 11:54:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20975471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silpium/pseuds/silpium
Summary: Some things are meant to be. Some things aren’t.Kageyama would usually dismiss the thought in a second. But—what if something that isn’t meant to be is something he wants desperately? What if something that is meant to be is something he can’t stand?Or: fate is a funny thing.





	having nothing in an infinite night

**Author's Note:**

> for inktober day #4, "freeze."
> 
> please note there are themes of depression, trauma, and death (minor character) in this fic. please take care of yourself and don't read if that'll upset you!

Kageyama’s mother once told him this: there are some things in life that are meant to be and some things that aren’t. It’s been etched into him, even though he doesn’t quite understand—who decides what’s meant to be? Does that mean that nothing he does matters?

Kageyama doesn't like thinking about it, so he doesn’t. But the thought crops up often, unbidden, when he can’t sleep at night, when he’s walking home, when he’s trying to solve some impossible problem from his math homework. 

Some things are meant to be. Some things aren’t.

Kageyama would usually dismiss the thought in a second. But—what if something that isn’t meant to be is something he wants desperately? What if something that is meant to be is something he can’t stand?

/ * \

Kageyama and Hinata are going to different universities, hours and hours apart. Kageyama wants to be angry about it—_needs_ to be—even now, months after learning about it, but he can’t. It won’t well up in him.

Some things are meant to be. Some things aren’t.

He and Hinata were supposed to travel to the top of the world together. They were meant to be, for sure. How could it have changed?

After the graduation ceremony and saying goodbye to everyone, he and Hinata stick to one another like glue. It’s not like they’re heading off to university immediately, but it’s soon enough that it hangs over them like sickness in the air. Hinata is as jubilant as ever, maybe even more than usual. Kageyama knows him well enough to read between the lines.

Hinata drags him all around campus, all around town. Kageyama easily recognizes everywhere they go as places they’ve been together before, places they’ve frequented—like Hinata is trying to carve all their intricacies into memory.

The last place they visit is the field they practiced in during their suspension from the club, way back during their first-year. 

Hinata goes quiet. He stands there by the tree, hands wrung together, and looks out across the field, at the gym in the distance, at the shift from day to night and the emerging stars.

Kageyama does not break the silence. 

Hinata surreptitiously glances up at Kageyama. He startles when he notices Kageyama doing the same thing. His lips turn to a thin line, and as he exhales, Kageyama sees the nervousness running through him—the slight tremor to his hands, the twiddling of his fingers. 

Normally Kageyama would call him out on it. But that would shatter this moment.

“Tobio.” Hinata finally—blessedly? cursedly?—breaks the silence. “I… wanted to tell you something.”

Kageyama still can’t find his voice. “Go ahead,” he manages eventually, without sounding like himself.

“It’s just that…” Hinata hesitates. “I really…” Something overtakes his face that Kageyama can’t name. “I’ll miss you.”

And, so softly yet so loudly: “Me, too.”

/ * \

Kageyama wakes up the next day to his alarm—why did he even set his school alarm last night?—and buries his face in his pillow. He’s way too tired to even think about getting out of bed and just lies there, trying to fall back asleep, until his father creaks the door open. “Tobio? You’ll be late for your graduation proceedings if you sleep in any longer.”

Kageyama’s confused noise is muffled by the pillow. “Graduation was yesterday. Don’t you remember?” He lifts his head up and feels around for his phone, finds it, and opens up the lockscreen— 

_Wednesday, March 16th._

His father chuckles. “You’re not getting out of it so easily. I’ve been asking to have the 16th off for months now. Anyway, you’d best start getting ready. I’ll leave you to it.”

Kageyama stares at his phone. He knows he attended graduation yesterday, remembers the goosebumps on his skin, the change palpable in the air, the… 

His phone dings with a message. It’s Hinata.

_good morning… |ω･)ﾉ you better have remembered to keep your schedule clear for after graduation!! i have plans for us!!_

It’s the same exact text that Hinata sent him yesterday morning. Same time, same stupid emoji, same overuse of exclamation points.

And as Kageyama progresses through the day—

Everything is the same. Hinata drags him all around campus, all around town, and—

“I wanted… to tell you something.”

The nervousness is more evident the second time around—this is different, something more nuanced than Hinata’s usual anxiety before a game or big class presentation. Kageyama can’t place it.

“I’ll miss you.”

Kageyama wants to pry it out of him, but all he manages is “Me, too.”

/ * \

After the third or fourth loop, Kageyama accepts that this is not solving itself. But then the thought crops into his mind that maybe, for now, things are fine like this. There’s a certain peace to the repetition, to the ability to predict—there’s a routine.

There’s the risk of it all getting stale, of course. Kageyama has just enough power to create new events and new conversations by saying something different or pushing for a different option—like telling Hinata he’d rather go home after graduation than take a walk down memory lane.

The ability to hold time steady and still in his hands is something he never knew he wanted. Now that he has it, though, it’s tantalizing. He can’t imagine wanting to give it up.

/ * \

“You sure are sentimental today,” Hinata tells Kageyama as they stand in line for pork buns. It’s not the first loop they’ve done this, and it won’t be the last. “So emotional! It’s kinda gross.” He has this satisfied smirk on his face, and he starts giggling at Kageyama’s glare.

“Shove it. It’s not like you’re any better.”

“But I really am! You’re the one who’s, like, insisting we go out and get pork buns and go practice in the park and all this other stuff I hadn’t even thought of! I thought I’d have to drag you kicking and screaming to hang out with me today like I always do.”

Kageyama rolls his eyes and huffs. “You’re exaggerating.”

“Tobio, I saw you smile earlier, and it wasn’t scary.” He pauses, looks Kageyama dead in the eye for effect. “I don’t know what else I could say to convince you.”

Kageyama makes a half-hearted grab for Hinata that he easily dodges, laughing in triumph. 

Kageyama does not only ever spends these days with Hinata. He’s spent a few with Yachi, with the other third-years, a few by himself—but he always finds that he’s happiest with Hinata, and so that is how he spends most of them. Hinata’s always been the closest thing Kageyama has to a best friend, and that hasn’t changed. If anything, seeing all the different responses Hinata could give and learning how he ticks is strangely intimate in its own right. 

As they get to the front of the line, Hinata pays before Kageyama can even pull his wallet out. “My treat,” he sing-songs. “You better be grateful.”

Kageyama bites into the pork bun; it’s the best one he’s had yet. Even through all the tiny little glances that Hinata gives him throughout the rest of the day that he thinks Kageyama isn’t noticing.

/ * \

Kageyama has long lost track of the days.

This one has been a normal loop—actually, similar to the very first. Hinata’s brought him to the park, the sun is bleeding into the horizon, and he said, “I have something to tell you.”

Kageyama’s not expecting anything much. He still hasn’t had a single loop where Hinata has actually told him whatever it is. In some loops, Hinata doesn’t bring it up at all. It’s not that Kageyama isn’t curious, because he is, but—something always stops him. A dread building up from the pit of his stomach, a fear curling tight around his heart. Some things are better left unsaid and unknown.

“Go ahead.”

“Okay.” Hinata takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I—like you, Tobio. I like you a lot, a lot, and… I just wanted to tell you before we—”

“You _what_?” In contrast, Kageyama’s breath has been knocked right out of him. The wind blows gently, yet it raises goosebumps all over his skin. 

“I like you,” Hinata says, again, so simply, like his words are soft and sweet and not shattering the sanctuary Kageyama so carefully crafted. “And I, um, was thinking you might like me back. You’ve been so—you seemed so happy to be with me today, and I thought maybe—” At Kageyama’s continued silence, his voice gradually grows tighter. “I don’t know. I understand if you don’t feel the same way, or if this is—too much. I just thought that… now is better than never.”

“Why would you tell me this? Why would you—ever think that I…”

Hinata flinches, and it would sting if Kageyama could think anything of it. “I don’t know,” he murmurs. “I’m sorry. I’ll—I’m—I’ll go home. I—goodnight, Kageyama.”

He brushes by Kageyama in a rush, and Kageyama is left standing there, watching the way the colors bleed into one another, the way they come together and change.

/ * \

The next day, Kageyama does not reply to Hinata’s text with the stupid emoji and all the exclamation points. He does not go to graduation no matter how much his father pleads with him (_you know how hard it was for me to get this day off, Tobio_ and _your mother would want to see you go_.). He does not get out of bed at all.

He should’ve known from all the tiny, sneaky glances, all the smiles that were just a bit too wide, all the clinging and affectionate touching and—

Kageyama cannot look Hinata in the face, now that he does.

It’s not that Kageyama doesn’t feel something similar. Maybe he always has. But it’s easier to let things stay as they are.

He would regret it most of all if greed stole what they had.

/ * \

Kageyama does not remember much about his childhood except for his mother. He remembers the hushed breathiness of her voice, barely audible over the machines, as she told him, “Some things are meant to be. Some things aren’t.” A pause as she stroked Kageyama’s head from her bed. “I’m not meant to be by your side as you grow up big and strong, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be there in spirit. I’ll always be with you, Tobio, even if it doesn’t seem like it.”

Kageyama had looked up at her, wide-eyed, and she’d managed a smile. “Go on, dear. Go enjoy the sunshine today. I’ll be fine without you for a day.”

/ * \

When he hears his father crying that night, he just knows.

From then on, there is a ghost lingering in every corner. 

(His mother was not wrong when she said she would be there in spirit.)

/ * \

The next day, Kageyama does not reply to Hinata’s text with the stupid emoji and all the exclamation points. He does not go to graduation no matter how much his father pleads with him (_you know how hard it was for me to get this day off, Tobio_ and _your mother would want to see you go_.). He does not get out of bed at all.

/ * \

The next day, Kageyama does not reply to Hinata’s text with the stupid emoji and all the exclamation points. He does not go to graduation no matter how much his father pleads with him (_you know how hard it was for me to get this day off, Tobio_ and _your mother would want to see you go_.). He does not get out of bed at all.

/ * \

The next day, Kageyama does not reply to Hinata’s text with the stupid emoji and all the exclamation points. He does not go to graduation no matter how much his father pleads with him (_you know how hard it was for me to get this day off, Tobio_ and _your mother would want to see you go_.). He does not get out of bed at all.

/ * \

Eventually, Kageyama realizes this: he can neither move forward nor stay stagnant.

As if on cue, his phone chimes—Hinata’s text. 

How did Hinata stare into the looming abyss of the unknown, have it stare back at him, and still steel his heart into jumping?

_Meet me in the park ASAP_, Kageyama texts him back. _It’s important._

Hinata texts him back an array of confused kaomojis, question marks, and exclamation points, but shows no hesitation in agreeing. 

He arrives and sits down next to Kageyama by the tree. Before he can get a word in edgewise, Kageyama asks: “You like me, right?”

Hinata flushes beet red, lips turning into a flat line. “How did you—you—you _knew_?”

Kageyama shrugs. 

“Oh my _gosh_,” Hinata whines. “You’re such a—you’re such a jerk! I thought I was hiding it so well, and I was gonna confess to you tonight, and it was gonna be so romantic, and—I can’t believe—”

“Why did you… want to confess?” Kageyama interrupts, and Hinata goes silent, cocking his head to the side.

“What do you mean? Of course I wanted to confess.”

“Aren’t you—” This doesn’t matter. The loop will repeat the next day. It’s safe to be vulnerable. It won’t change anything. “Aren’t you scared? That we’ll break up, or grow apart, or…”

Hinata only looks even more confused. “Of course I am. But I trust you, y’know? I don’t think there’s anything we couldn’t work through. And besides… I would rather seize my own fate than let life pass me by. I can live with whatever comes from what I do, but I can’t live with not knowing what might’ve been.”

Kageyama can’t answer. His voice is caught in his throat.

“You don’t have to give me an answer tonight,” Hinata tells him before they part. “Or tomorrow. Whenever you figure it out is fine.”

/ * \

Kageyama wakes up the next day to a text:

_tobiooo ☆ﾐ(o*･ω･)ﾉ we should meet up and practice!! σ( •̀ ω •́ σ) i’ve missed hitting your tosses with graduation taking up so much of our time!!_

/ * \

Some things are meant to be. Some things aren’t.

Kageyama will never know which is which. And maybe that’s okay.

/ * \

The first step is always the hardest.

The first step is always the hardest, and yet—

“Shouyou, I like you.”

Kageyama takes it anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> as always, thanks to [luci](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luciferTM/pseuds/luciferTM) for betaing this for me!
> 
> please feel free to comment, concrit or otherwise, or reach out to me on [twitter @queeenmab](https://twitter.com/queeenmab)! thanks so much for reading and have a great day!


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